


Mithridates

by Veraverorum (your_Mother)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_Mother/pseuds/Veraverorum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foreign words in Ered Luin.</p><p>Nwalin week day 1: Ered Luin</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mithridates

There were a lot of tales making their rounds about how much that fox of a dwarf got around, and not all of them were about his sexual escapades.  
  
There was a bit of envy in the guards' tone when they talked about the thief's wanderings around Arda. It was not in a dwarf's nature to travel so far and wide; dwarves were solid creatures like the stone Mahal had carved them from. They belonged to stone and from stony mountain to stony mountain they travelled, if they had to. The exodus from Erebor had been a terribly devastating exception.  
  
Yet in the deepest part of their core they longed for all the mountains they couldn't see and feel and live.  
  
When the fox thief was closed behind bars though he was not mistreated, most of the time. He was seen more like a storyteller, and he had many to share if a guard bribed him well enough with a blanket during a cold night, or if a jug of refreshing ale mysteriously appeared in his prison when even the stone walls of the cells were too hot to lean against.  
  
All in all the fox thief was not wrongly or cruelly treated. More so because the guards suspected he would get himself caught usually for petty crimes, probably to evade family drama. He was a jovial dwarf to host behind bars and he was sort of on first name bases with many of the soldiers who patrolled the prisons, exchanging playful banters and dirty jokes.  
  
He occasionally also translated for the wanderers who fell on the wrong side of the law, making the guards wonder how far the thief had actually travelled. He was indeed an amiable fellow with those who were foreigners in Ered Luin.  
  
He once said there was nothing worse than being held behind the bars of a place without understanding the language of its wardens, so he made it his mission to make their forced stay a bit better.  
  
For that reason the thief had almost witnessed more interrogations than the eldest soldier working there, but his presence made the foreigners more cooperative, the guards had noticed, versus when he was absent. It was no wonder though it was hard to answer a question when one did not even understand what was said. The thief made that known often enough that even the guards had started to see reason behind his words.  
  
Due to the awareness he seemed to have in regards to everything, sometimes the guards even asked him for advise. The thief was a wise fellow, more savvy than a dwarf of Ered Luin could ever dream to be.  
  
And yet... and yet, there was that one dwarf in the regiment that had an odd relationship with the thief.  
  
His name was Dwalin, and whenever he was around the thief started talking in another language.  
  
The Eredluinians could never understand what was said, but the occasional traveller behind the bars always laughed with their belly whenever this occurred.  
  
The thief pressed himself against the bars, hands hanging out as if he was leaning on the counter of an inn, his gaze fixed on the tall dwarf and his taller tuft of hair.  
  
It was as if the voice of the thief changed, like his personality. He went from being a pleasant convict to a creature burning on seduction.  
  
His tone was deep, rumbling rich from his throat. Sometime the words were so full of lilts that they sounded like a song of faraway lands; sometimes they were harsher and peppered with clicks like the echo of battles. But there was a power to them that made everyone present in the room blush under their beards.  
  
Dwalin too was not indifferent to them, even if in another manner. At the foreign words, his nostrils flared at the same time his shoulder stiffened under his leather protections. He never answered back to the thief's provocations, or at least not in words. His breath though did become uneven.  
  
It was a comic sight according to the cells occupants and Nori was always sure to translate and point that out, smirking at expenses of the dwarf he was enthralled with.

 

**Author's Note:**

> In Pliny the Elder's account of famous polyglots, Mithridates could speak the languages of all the twenty-two nations he governed. This reputation led to the use of Mithridates' name as title in some later works on comparative linguistics, such as Conrad Gessner's Mithridates de differentis linguis, (1555), and Adelung and Vater's Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde (1806–1817).
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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